say to white forty
“you’re leading me on”
say to green lambchop
“all the friends I get start wars”
my concentration an organ playing beard
“ain’t you a funny little thing”
if you have one more secret
“I’m mostly blind now”
shopping cart runs the curb
“crackers in the barracks bunk bed”
even though it whispered to you all along
“look me in the eyes, both”
the city offers bottles who know
“people don’t change”
a day in the country held back by dusk
“not yet, let’s watch a few more ships go by”

ten bricks in the church street underground pose as passengers
unlike that sun, a head has directions
tile
escalators
runway streets
it’s all in the way between sleeping
and whatever it is that’s over now
or upstairs
above

there was a man down here before who left his wheelchair behind
just so you could imagine him getting up and walking
he waited for days before that action
sipping old coffee people left behind on the stone benches
we watched him grow bald and smooth
he sapped the electricity from the train cars
he swam an ocean
many peaks of water and monotony

if I had two handclaps I’d start a noise

words would stick in his mouth in winter time
the certain words that came his way
he made head repetition audible
let them loose to empty
and then he said that as well

saturdays a soothing static
summer was when he was a kid
the empty swimming pool seemed shameful
sleep already an enemy
plaster cool when everything else retained a night heat
several places to lie down
his body was a helping hand then, unseen
a circumstance of unaffordability turned secret

one brick in the church street underground left a mark
closed to a black eye
hospital tape right wrist
a former fiddle
a latter i.v. daintily cigaretted
legs a crossed decorum
his posture a smiling photo photograph of a public poison
sometimes the city wants to take you home
sometimes it’s a look of no need for you